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The American Delusion
We have long been sold the American Dream, this idea that you can overcome all odds, and make a living and carve out your niche in America, if you just work hard enough. If you get cancer, and your insurance fails to pay for the treatment, don't worry, you can always declare bankruptcy and save yourself some of the credit woes. And don't worry, you will be able to eventually crawl out of the credit pit you're in, in a mere 7 years. "Try doing that in another country, mother-fucker. Be grateful you can achieve that in America, buddy" Yeah, you're right, America is one of the only technologically-modern countries which allows its citizens to fall that far, without a safety net of some sort. Ingrates. They should be happy they at least hit a pile of straw we constructed for those who reach that point. "Noone's stopping you from being the next Bill Gates, you just have to work for it!" Yeah, you're right, I would only need to compete with every other glory seeking self-assured asswipe in Silicon Valley to come up with the new Irate Monkeys app, and once I've got that, it's all roses. I'll have billions like Mr. Gates and that douche-bag Z-something or other. I only have to make MY voice heard over every other idiot out here that I am better than. Yep, I kinda truly do feel that I am better than a lot of people here. But the people who are good tend to suspect they are for good reason, because they constantly bear witness to the fuckups of their peers. I'm not saying I am the best. I am simply saying I am better than most. When your first brilliant startup fails, you just have to pick up, and try again. This time, however, you have to convince the people who supported you the first time, to give you a second go and the costs involved in getting that far in the process are obscene. People delude themselves into thinking that the 'next big thing' is going to come from two guys in a garage. Those days are long since passed. The signal to noise ratio is so high that you need an ever-louder megaphone to be heard over the cacophony of idiocy. You also need extensive resources to compete in the market today, financially and socially. It's like high school, if you're not a cool kid, you're fucked. No thank you. That is not my Dream. That is someone's delusion. The same people who buy lotto tickets hoping to just buy themselves out. Hoping that they can save their miserable lives, unhappy with everything around them, because they just don't have enough money. I don't want money. I want security. I want comfort knowing that if I roll my car driving down a dirt road, the broken leg I suffer is not going to ruin me financially. Simply because I cannot justify the costs of insurance, because it's money for fear and that is tantamount to extortion. Fuck your American Delusion: I want a better life, and I know it's not going to be handed to me.